Quote:
Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq
See to me there's a key difference. 'Film' was generic to begin with, referring to an entire class of technology, not one specific type of film. 'GPS' refers to one specific constellation of positioning satellites operated by one specific entity - the US government.
Since 'Film' refers to a technology in general, not a specific instance of it, the real equivalent would be 'watching a Kodak 7248 EXR 100T' or 'going to see a Technicolor process 4'
The equivalent usage of 'film' as a generic technology with regard to location would be 'satellite positioning' not 'GPS'. Kodachrome, Technicolor, Polaroid, are all types of film. GLONASS, Galileo, and GPS are all types of satellite positioning system. They are not all types of 'GPS' just like 35mm, medium format, and Super 8 are not all types of 'Polaroid'. If/when some authoritative English dictionary redefines the term as such, I'll put up and shut up, until then, it's just plain wrong.
And yes it bugs me just as much when someone refers to any type of portable music player as an 'iPod'.
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It doesn't really matter that a term was generic to begin with or not. The point is that usage ultimately dictates the true meaning of that term, regardless of it's true original meaning (generic or not). If enough people decide to use "GPS" as a generic term for any location providing service, then that's what GPS will mean, despite its historical significance as the US owned satellite system. I agree that GLONASS is not a type of GPS, in the literal sense, but even today a lot of people will use the term interchangeably to mean any satellite location system and some people will use "GPS" to mean any kind of location system, satellite or not. Right now you're correct in what you're saying, I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that, but give it a couple of years and who knows.
At one point, film referred specifically to the medium that pictures were recorded on but we now use it to mean Movie, bet it on 35mm film, a disk or streamed.